Explore Illustrative Typography

Pictorial type is now more popular than ever. Steven Bonner shows how to bring your own approach to it.

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Pictorial type has made a massive impact on the creative industry over the last few years, and some amazing work has come from people like Alex Trochut, Vanila BCN and Luke Lucas.

Personally, I try to blur the line between illustration and typography, and enjoy the unexpected images that can come from looking for something familiar in the shapes of individual letters.

In this tutorial, I'll encourage you to seek out recognisable shapes (in this case, a swan) within letters and create images from them, by sketching then taking your ideas through to a finished piece in Illustrator and Photoshop. We'll use basic tools to create natural curves, gradients and texture, which when combined give the finished piece an airbrushed feel.